Televisions are developed from single-way broadcasting in the past to having digital two-way interactive functions, and now, even connected TVs combined with network are also developed. Currently, for signal sources of televisions around the world, analog signals are gradually replaced by digital signals. Along with the maturity of network streaming technologies, on-line video platforms and contents are also vigorously developed. Due to having playback on demand characteristics, without limitations of time and restrictions of channel numbers by cable TV system opera, users can experience more diversity of video platforms and contents.
At present, signals of current connected TVs are transmitted in two modes, one is transmitting digital signals for the users to watch programs broadcasted by digital television stations, and the other is connecting network signals for the users to watch network videos. The digital signals and the network signals are from different signal sources, e.g., the broadcasting industry in Europe launches a hybrid broadcast broadband TV (HbbTV) service. The HbbTV service is a TV service combining the conventional TV broadcasting service and network contents, which allow users to use social network applications or any other applications for interactive TV services, such as polling, discussion, shopping and so on.
Even though the TV digital signals and network communication technologies has been available, subscribers still have to access to the televisions for video files by using computer-like operation interfaces since most of the operators merely build in software for network video platform on the televisions. Accordingly, TV programs have not yet been actually integrated into network videos. The software for video platforms (e.g., YouTube, Tudou, Youku, and so on) which are built in the connected TVs generally provide a searching function, and when a specific video file is to be watched on a video platform, at least one keyword has to be manually input for searching. The manually input operation is less convenient and may cause further inconvenience resulted from poor searching results to users if the least one keyword is unclearly given.